"I'm thinking of Winchie."
"Oh!" A pause; then he asked, "As soon as you've got Winchie safely, we'll marry?"
This was a question she had not faced alone, yet. She was far from ready to face it with him. She found one of those phrases that come easily and naturally to women, ever compelled to be diplomatic. "If we both wish it then." Lightly, "You see, as I'm escaping with reputation intact, you're not bound to marry me."
"Bound?" he exclaimed. "Courtney, please don't joke about this."
"I'm quite serious—though I don't act as funereally as you do when you think you're serious."
"We love each other, and——"
"Do we?" An impulse of honesty, of impatience at her own yielding to the temptation to temporize forced her to say it, "Do we, Basil?"
"Courtney, have you—changed? Can't you forgive me for——"
"It isn't that," she interrupted, and she thought she was telling the truth. "Let's never speak of that. No—it's— Could anyone go through what we have without being—sobered?"
"That's true. It has made me love you more intensely, more earnestly than ever. What we've suffered has made us like—like the two pieces of metal the fire fuses into one."